August 26, 2009

Great design is a never-ending journey of discovery -- for which it helps to pack a healthy sense of humor. Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images. David is the "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped explode the possibilities of text on a page. Watch his talk on TED:

Remember that movie with the kids and pirate boat you liked to watch so much as a kid? The Goony, I believe it was called. Well, now you can see the difficulties director Richard Donner had in working with a cast of children in this 1985 making-of featurette. It looks like this film was probably Donner's most difficult shoot until Maverick, when the white hot chemistry between Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster was surely a distraction to all involved.

No more having to constantly switch out DVDs just to watch a constant string of scenes where someone gets cut apart so precisely that there are several seconds of stunned silence before the person falls apart at the slice lines! If I ever suspect I've been cut to pieces, I'm going to immediately start trying to move around. I'd rather fall apart prematurely than look like I'm the last to know that my torso is no longer connected to my legs. This montage makes indulging that base desire a breeze:

This sounds like something I want to feed my brain-mouth! The original Kids in the Hall are reuniting to an eight-part murder mystery mini-series, full of all the cross-dressing and comedy we've come to expect from the KitH brand! From Twitch:

A departure from sketch comedy, "Death Comes to Town" is an eight-part comic murder mystery. When Death gets off the Greyhound bus in small town Shuckton, Ontario, the entire town is drawn in when one of its most distinguished citizens is found murdered. As a suspect is arrested and the trial plays out, the entire town is affected and its dark secrets are unraveled and exposed.

Though not the sketch comedy that made the Kids famous around the world, Death Comes to Town will feature the original five Kids in the Hall, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thomson, all playing multiple characters, men and woman, all distinctively quirky, gender-bending, boundary pushing and definitively Kids in the Hall.

Principal photography will continue in North Bay until early October with broadcast scheduled on the CBC for January 2010.

Described as a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind from "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan. Nolan wrote the original screenplay and hopes to shoot the sci-fi action film in the summer for a release during summer 2010.

What causes these long, strange clouds? No one is sure. A rare type of cloud known as a Morning Glory cloud can stretch 1,000 kilometers long and occur at altitudes up to two kilometers high. Although similar roll clouds have been seen at specific places across the world, the ones over Burketown, QueenslandAustralia occur predictably every spring. Long, horizontal, circulating tubes of air might form when flowing, moist, cooling air encounters an inversion layer, an atmospheric layer where air temperature atypically increases with height. These tubes and surrounding air could cause dangerous turbulence for airplanes when clear. Morning Glory clouds can reportedly achieve an airspeed of 60 kilometers per hour over a surface with little discernible wind. Pictured above, photographer Mick Petroff photographed some Morning Glory clouds from his airplane near the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia.

August 23, 2009

Having trouble writing the shot list for your awesome short film? When in doubt, turn to comics. Wally Wood was a comics artist, writer and publisher who was responsible for tons of iconic images from the 20th century. His quick sketch of "22 Panels That Always Work" is proving to be one of his more enduring legacies. It's getting passed around in new media circles these days and it remains a wonderful go-to resource for visual story-tellers in many mediums.

Ask any working comic book artist who has been in the business for a few years about "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work", and they know of it like it was the bible. So whether you're an aspiring comic book artist, a film student, or trying to get into storyboarding, I'd suggest you print it out and keep it handy when you're composing your shots. Download any of the two hi-res versions here:

Here, they've managed to retell the Hal Jordan GREEN LANTERN origin story as a trampoline to a science fiction buddy cop film noir type of thing that just kicks a lot of ass.

Written by long time Superhero Animation God, Alan Burnett - and directed by Lauren Montgomery (SUPERMAN VS DOOMSDAY and the recent WONDER WOMAN film).

The basic story is that Hal Jordan becomes GL the way we all know. Then Sinestro and his fellow Corps members show up and take him to OA, where the Guardians doubt his abilities. Sinestro takes an interest in the hot shot braggart type from Earth and asks to take him under his wing to bring Abin Sur's murderer to justice.

Thus begins Hal's first mission. The results are rather fantastic. What we end up with is an Animated Sci Fi version of TRAINING DAY that gets pretty darn intense. By the time you get to the end, there's been MASSIVE casualties of many characters and I found myself completely sold on the viability of a greater Green Lantern universe. I couldn't help but imagine an epic live-action version of this film, with the sensibilities they brought on for the Iron Man film with a major sci-fi/interplanetary flare to it could work very well.

Nice animation, great effects, superb designs, and impressive voice actors. You'll really dig this film if you love Green Lantern - and if you're a kid that has grown up seeing GREEN LANTERN in his various Comic Book and Animated forms as a portion of a larger team, it's fantastic to see a full on Green Lantern Corp story - it's pretty damn awesome!

Style, as I define it, is the reoccurrence of elements from one piece of work to the next. Style should reflect the designer and his/her experience. Rather, style commonly tends to be a recycling of major parts. I said "elements" before for a reason. For graphic design; reusing a good font, color, or grid is fine. For character design; reusing the same body shapes, hand models and mouths over and over is fine. For background design; reusing the same technique for making trees, shrubs, plants, rocky textures, foliage, buildings is fine. But... I wonder if applying the same formula to everything is really design? Think about it like this: If everything you did looked and worked as if cast from the same mold, how would you evolve? Experimentation is a big part of design (at least for some). Doing the same thing over and over has to have a negative effect on lexploration, because, well, you aren't exploring.Alow me an analogy. A young carpenter builds a house. It is a great house and people like it. Soon, others want a house just like it. Different knobs, faucets and tile, but the exact same house. After some time, the carpenter has built hundreds of these houses and has grown very efficient in doing so. He can now build one in half the time as the first one took. So, is he a great carpenter? What if someone approached him to build a completely new house. Could he do it?Designers need to evolve to survive just like anything else. There is always merit in figuring something out. I think this is what design is all about. The challenge is doing it the first time, not the 10th time. Once you find

With that said, I also wish to take issue with the client side of design. How does style effect client work. It is easy for most designers to do a great site for their own firm. But, can they do it for their clients? I see a lot a great self-promotion sites with awe-inspiring designs, but I see plenty with very substandard portfolios also. I think, and I could be wrong, but I think that this happens because the client doesn't want the "carbon copy house", they want the "new house". And the "carpenter" can't build it. The usual response to this is an attempt to put the client down at a lower level. You call them stupid and talk of how bad their taste is while you sit suffering through their project anyway. You wind up getting your cheque and you add their substandard compromise to your already average portfolio.

Most television animation producers want the most refined, consistent, safe, appropriate, rigid, cautious, and clean design style possible for animated cartoon characters. It's part of the process, continuity of the character's structure, volume, clothing, and visual design style must remain functional, practical, and easily re-produce-able. John K flies in the face of this convention with his wackier, more exaggerated style (though you'll never get him to admit that he actually has a "style").

Study art books that focus on whatever medium you're going for. Pixar's "Art of" books set a fantastic standard for character and environment design. Work hard at making your own personal design style, to force it to evolve, experiment, research, and when it all comes together, call it done and try something else.

Take a lesson from music. Popular music is trend. But there are artists who surpass this, who stay around over time. Why? Because some artists have been in a perpetual state of reinvention since their first song. No one wants to hear the same thing from the same person forever. Design is no different. substandard portfolio. And I ask you, couldn't this have been avoided if you approached the problem in a way unique to the client and their individual problems? In these cases, what I find most ironic is that the client will strip away the style from you, thus removing the only resemblance of the designer at all. Set trends then abandon them. Reuse elements that work, but don't overdo it. You can shear a sheep many times but skin it only once.

August 17, 2009

Sure, you've seen that Matrix movie, and you've probably seen a Bible in your local Bible Shoppe, but have you ever seen the two FUSED??? Well, get ready to! In Legion, God is using his Godpower to turn humans into demonic Agent Smiths! But, thankfully, Paul Bettany as the Archangel Neo is there to protect the unborn Christ figure! Now that's some action you can take to church on Sunday, along with your shame!

August 15, 2009

Cloudy skies over Wuhan, China hid the delicate solar corona during July's total eclipse of the Sun. Still, the Moon's silhouette was highlighted by these glistening diamonds as the total eclipse phase ended. Caused by bright sunlight streaming through dips and valleys in the irregular terrain along the Moon's edge, the effect is known as Baily's Beads, named after Francis Baily who called attention to the phenomenon in 1836. The dramatic appearance of the beads at the beginning or end of a total solar eclipse is also known as the Diamond Ring effect. In this remarkable image, a small, pinkish solar prominence can also be seen along the edge, below the diamonds.

Gentle, poignant and affecting animation that succeeds through understatement and showcases some highly impressive visual sequences. The first major feature by director of The Incredibles Brad Bird is a wonderful animated film, based on poet Ted Hughes' book 'The Iron Man'. This film is as dramatically satisfying as it is graphically impressive. Set in a small American town in the 1950s, the film tells the story of a young boy who befriends a hulking robot from outer space, although the benign creature reveals hidden destructive capacities when threatened by military paranoia.

Writer-director Bird cut his teeth on 'The Simpsons', and his feature debut, which showcased the voices of Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr and Vin Diesel as the giant, is witty and endearing without being cute or condescending. The film has genuine atmosphere and texture. If you've never seen, go see it now! Here's a clip:

Watch this trailer. It appears Kick-Ass, as its name implies, might genuinely be kind of kick-ass. I mean, assuming I'm using the term correctly. It's like a "cool" or a "rad," right? That's a "kick-ass"? Then yes. Oh, and it's recorded illegally from a convention, so don't tell Johnny Law. [Via iwatchstuff]